No, I wasn't thinking about what tomorrow is, or her, when I called you. (If you couldn't tell from me not mentioning it.)
I was just glad to finally catch you at a decent hour, to hear about how you've been doing; to hear about how your daughters have been doing.

To be honest, I didn't even know that day was coming up.
I'm still trying to catch dad at a decent hour to wish him a happy belated. (That's been my parental focus lately.)
As for tomorrow, well, I've never really cared for that particular day, or her, to be honest.
(You already know this.)

I never did tell you how beautiful I thought your eulogy was.
I thought about it for months (years) afterwards.
How you somehow managed to only focus on the good, or, no, that's not quite right.
Rather, how you managed to make all the bad somehow seem not so bad. As if our lives had been enriched, rather than impoverished by it. But like, it wasn't even a trick, spun by some spin artist.  
It was genuine, and a testament to your ability to forgive,
and with you being the eldest, and having received the brunt of it . . .  
I just thought, you know, like, maybe . . .
well, you know, maybe I have told you already how beautiful I thought it was.

Sometimes, I think of responses to things, or things I'll say to people in my head (over and over again,) but then I forget whether or not I ever got around to actually saying them to the person I intended to.
Sometimes, I say them to someone else instead.
Or else, I say them to the person I meant to, but forget that it's already been said,
and so I say it to them over and over again.
Hammering them over the head with repetition upon repetition on repetitive hammering hits on the head, over and over again -
deaf to whatever they might have said in response or defense.

Sometimes, I fear, I'm turning into our mother, in that sense.

The glow of streetlight bled through rows of aluminum,
streaking the scene in shadow.
An off-season quiet stirring in the bones,
and the intermittent flash of a moth's wings.
The echo of cicadas drowning out everything.
A hum to follow you home.

At some point you will have ridden all the rides.
Sampled all the options.
Tasted every entrée.

Your life, an archive of reviews
compiled into a guide
that led you nowhere.

The dimpled back of the banshee that haunts your hollows,
as inescapable as the back of your eyelids.
The acid in your veins, the same pH as the bile you spent your youth spewing onto unsuspecting plants. Poor things.
Pouring whatever you can down gullets, gutters, toilets -
fancying yourself freed from the fiend that had been keening deep inside your bowel.
Romanticizing the expectorant as some kind of exorcist, ridding yourself of the demon you spent the entirety of your childhood feeding.

Then I might not have to hide my tears in the space between the wall and the bed.

One day the world will look kinder upon us,
and when the wind takes the ash by the hand
and sweeps it into uncertain horizons,
they will see that I have taken the fire they set

and made her my own child. I whisper to her
that she does not hurt me, that even the sunrises
on the horizon covet her colour. I remind her
that wounds are opened in anger but burns are
borne of grit and hope, the unwanted spawn
of pain and desire scarring itself into a dance
of fire and flame.

Then I might not have to hide my love in the space between my shadow and yours.

The Wild Iris

by Louise Gluck

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little.  And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.

I watch as the droplet eases itself
down from the wound, into a strip of paper,
scarlet on crimson. some might call it a stain,
but this is no mistake, I will fold myself
in, like blush on cheek, I will make it look real.

is it pathetic to imitate what we can never achieve?
the night sky gloats in silent mockery. the trail of
her dress drags along my dry eyes, and she burns
a hole for every jewel I cannot reach.

is it a sin to covet a sin? my fingers run along
the grooves of my carved pupils, and I can't
remember anything aside from the warmth
of a star in another orbit.

I fold my three hundred and fifty second paper star.
Does the moon believe that these are her children too?
Or are my paper cuts for naught? One day, I know
the paper will be skin and the star will be a sun.

but until then I will bleed, and until then
I will have to suffice with a constellation of scars
that glow in the dark on my ceiling.

Remember that one time when I asked you if you remembered what happened way back when?
I forget what your answer was then,
but I remember how much it meant to me to be reminiscing with the Queen of Forgetting.

Remember when you used to care about memories?

And we went careening down streets while screaming in a mix of anxiety and exhilaration.
Each day blending with the next; driving past every chance we had to turn back,
living as if we were on a never-ending vacation.

Remember when you used to have fun? When fun was number one and everything else was boring?

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And when the Duchess of puking tried to kiss the Archduke of Douches.
Our toes a familiar sight while seeing double.
How we used to recite unrecyclable verses while climbing into the back seats of hearses.

Remember when we used to actually talk about things? No, not like this. I mean, passionately. Remember when we used to get so heated about a topic that we'd practically be screaming at each other?

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And swinging through trees that we'd climbed against better judgement;
passing under streetlights that painted haloes around our dark heads.

Remember when you used to laugh in a way that didn't sound frantic? When your grin didn't look so much like a grimace?

And going to public places in broad daylight just to read the faces of those who couldn't see beyond their own noses?

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And looking at our toes and hitting pavement but then bouncing up again to get caught in the hurricane of everyones' perceptions of what was happening

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Remember when you used to make genuine human connections with other people?

just to find ourselves in the Eye of the Storm, staring at each other, grinning in a way that isn't frightened or frightening;
Laughing in the way that isn't desperate or forced, but hearing it get warped by the howl of wind surrounding us.

Remember

How to

Wind that's closing in.

All my hopes blown away in a cloud of smoke sent up from the bathroom floor.

Heretofore forever to be well and constantly ignored.

If and then there is a justice to the semi-constant roar,
you'll find me waiting with my shades drawn down against everything that causes war.

That's not to say I'll go away on some single-sailed white ship.
My flag is not the kind of flimsy rag to get shattered by the wind,
but if and when I climb back up from these jagged steps that broke my back,
I'll carry you all with me.

That's a promise and a fact.